Voroshilovgrad Read online

  “C’mon, you fuckin’ bitch,” the gray-haired man sputtered at Nikolaich, “do something. C’mon, you son of a bitch!”

  Nikolaich stopped his hopping and considered the members of the penal battalion: his last line of defense. They did their best to disappear, lining up behind the gray-haired man, but the latter took a step off to the side, propelling them into Nikolaich’s field of vision.

  “You hear that?” Nikolaich asked his troops. “What are you standing around for? Forward!”

  The penal battalion swayed and headed straight at us, but stopped after just a few steps, holding their shovels indecisively. Pasha exchanged scornful glances with Borman. And at that point, Arkady, pushing himself off his Volkswagen, moved forward. Prokhor followed suit. Unhurried, Arkady took out a pack of Camels, taking one for himself and then extending the pack to Prokhor, who took one too.

  “In all honesty,” Arkady said, “the seal was just fine. But that signature—man, that was something.”

  “Not at all,” Prokhor said, gesturing for a light.

  Arkady took out his lighter, lifted it up to Prokhor’s cigarette, and then lit his own cigarette from the tip of Prokhor’s. I could already tell where this was going.

  “The signature was just fine,” Prokhor continued, taking a luxuriant drag. “The seals, though—the seals were fuckin’ shit.”

  “The seals were fuckin’ shit?” Arkady repeated, adding a hint of poorly concealed sarcasm.

  “That’s what I said.”

  “The seals were absolutely fine,” Arkady said heatedly. “Come on, dumbass, did you even look at them?”

  “You’re the dumbass,” Prokhor replied—likewise heatedly, it must be noted.

  Arkady neatly put out his cigarette and nailed Prokhor with a right hook from nowhere. Prokhor spun down the asphalt toward the penal battalion, his Camel flying out of his mouth in a wide arc—but he recovered almost instantly and pounced on his assailant. Arkady sidestepped Prokhor, who flew past him, charging like a bull. He pivoted and darted back toward Arkady, essentially hopping into his arms. Both of them wound up rolling down the warm asphalt like kids on the beach, Arkady trying to choke Prokhor, Prokhor repeatedly boxing Arkady’s ears, maybe trying to make him go deaf . . .

  The soldiers just stood there and watched, shocked, trying not to breathe, because they naturally didn’t want to disturb those two ferocious lions of organized crime. Nikolaich, the old prick, knew all about our local gang’s antics, and shouldn’t have been unnerved, he stood there dead still, all pale and green, as though he had broken out in camouflage. The tractor drivers were peering intently out of their windshield, already quite invested in the struggle playing out in front of him. At last realizing how much these Gypsies were making a fool out of him, the gray-haired man spat onto the asphalt and tossed his briefcase from one hand to another.

  “That’s enough,” he said, just loud enough for everyone to hear. “You’re fuckin’ dead meat. I wanted to settle this peacefully, but now you’re fuckin’ dead meat. You don’t even know how fuckin’ dead you are, you can’t even imagine. And you, you fuckin’ bitch,” he hissed at Nikolaich. “Go hang yourself. You got that straight, you fuckin’ bitch? Go and hang yourself right this minute.”

  He turned around and climbed into the Jeep. It peeled out, and disappeared behind the hangar. The troops scurried somewhat timidly off to their truck, hanging their heads. They tossed their shovels up first, then hopped inside and disappeared around the corner.

  It got incredibly quiet. All we could hear were Arkady and Prokhor trying to catch their breath down on the asphalt. Nikolaich looked us over, taking in each face in turn stopping at Ernst. He zeroed in on Ernst, even though he hadn’t actually done anything to Nikolaich—Ernst was only standing there alongside his friends, just killing time. But Nikolaich was staring directly at Ernst, who intercepted his scornful look and answered in kind. So there they stood, nobody paying much attention to them—Pasha had gone over to help Arkady and Prokhor up. Borman was surveying our guys, talking over the fight in detail, and Injured was talking with someone too, but something struck me as wrong about the way Ernst and Nikolaich were still standing there, glaring at each other like dogs before a fight, as though time had stopped and this whole situation pertained only to them, as though it were up to the two of them alone to decide how we were going to finish this.

  It was obvious what Ernst was thinking. Ernst was thinking, “Something bad is going to happen, something real bad is definitely going to happen. For now, nobody can really tell—they all think that the worst is behind us and that the storm has passed. But that’s not true at all.” Ernst was very familiar with this feeling, with the sense of impending danger. It was coming, all right, and there was no way to avoid it. They’d have to run this gauntlet one way or another. There would be no way to speed the process up or avoid it altogether. All you could do was look the ominous beast in the eye and wait. Its terrible snout would sniff you for a while, then it’d just walk away, leaving fear and stench behind. Ernst almost immediately had a flashback to when he once felt the rotten breath of brewing trouble. He recalled that trapped feeling that clogged his lungs, he recalled that deep-seated fear that encroaches upon new territory like swollen rivers in March. Also, he remembered that the most important thing is to keep fighting and maintain eye contact. Then everything would be fine, and then everything would pan out—the most important thing is to be ready for the worst.

  It was just as obvious what Nikolaich was thinking: “I still have time to fix everything. I’ll get the job done, everything is going to be all right.” Even while everyone was jeering at him, while everyone was humiliating him in front of his superior, in front of the army guys he’d arranged to have sent over, he kept thinking the same thing:“I’ll get the job done. I’ll fix everything.” What was he planning on fixing? Nikolaich had no clue. Over the past two days, he’d made his life so complicated that he no longer knew how to make things right again. Those cunt Gypsies had made him look like a fool in front of the gray-haired man. Nikolaich could picture it now—the gray-haired man regaling everyone at the office with the story, giving Mr. Pastushok a report on how Nikolaich had handled himself, making him look like a total asshole in the eyes of all those bastards at work. If people didn’t laugh at him so much, if they didn’t humiliate him so often, he’d persevere somehow, he’d get through it. Now they were just ripping his heart out, though, right through his throat, and stomping on it. And this was a never-ending, vicious cycle. He stood there with tears of desperation in his eyes, remembering the throbbing pain of endless humiliation—he could barely admit that to himself that he had always lived with it.

  Ernst thought back to the old German military positions: trenches covered in springy pine needles that crunched under one’s feet, poorly preserved fortifications, completely forgotten. He’d hunted for them for a while because he knew that there should be some trenches still around, at least according to the military maps. However, none of his friends who were digging around in the woods and marshes here from dawn till dusk—unearthing weapons, medals, and most importantly, unaccounted-for Wehrmacht soldiers who were worth big bucks—knew anything about those positions. Moreover, they would all laugh at him, saying, “Dude, this is just like you and your tanks. Quit dreaming—there aren’t any trenches still out there.” But Ernst took it upon himself to talk with the locals, and one of them eventually admitted that there actually were some trenches, deep in the woods, but now they’d be nearly impossible to find. After the war, they purposely planted a ton of pine trees out there, because they didn’t feel like extracting all of those shells and bombs that had fallen into the sand dunes near their posts back in ’43. The trees were just there to keep people from wandering around. Ernst combed all of the nearby forests and windbreaks, on all fours no less, and finally came across a few heaped trenches that were almost completely concealed by the pine roots. He set up camp for two days, meticulously digging through hot s
and infused with bullets, shell casings, and army uniform buttons. In the evening of day two one of the locals called the cops, who sped on over and nabbed Ernst Thälmann, the renegade archaeologist. Maybe that was when Ernst had felt a similar terror, and when he’d learned how to master it: when they were taking him back to the station. He knew that the next few months would be rough and that he’d have to prepare himself for the worst. He’d have to live through that nagging sense of impending doom, knowing that it would recede, eventually. Just wait it out. Persevere.

  After wrapping up his stint at sea, back when he was a promising young specialist with dreams of becoming the captain of a commercial ship, Nikolaich had gotten to know it very well. No matter how much he tried to be one of the guys, no matter how accommodating he tried to be, he was always rejected outright, accused of pursuing his own greedy interests and lacking a sense of camaraderie. And he couldn’t say anything in his defense, because it was true, on some level—he really didn’t have any sense of camaraderie; he didn’t have any, and that was that. His whole family was the same—his whole greedy family. His mom didn’t have any sense of camaraderie, and neither did his dad. Nothing—not even active involvement in the Communist Youth League and the management position he finally achieved—could make him feel like less of an outsider. In any new group of people, under any imaginable circumstances, he felt rejected; people refused to accept him, no matter what he did. And all of his unsuccessful attempts to be part of the gang only made things worse—he’d quickly become the butt of all their jokes. His superiors didn’t care for him, his underlings didn’t respect him, and women wouldn’t put out for him, although, truth be told, he didn’t really want anything to do with them anyway. He didn’t have any friends, any kids, any pets. He was afraid of the people he worked for. Moreover, he was afraid of revealing his fear of them. And now here he was, standing there in front of us, all of these panicky thoughts racing through his mind. His eyes were red with hatred and helplessness.

  He recalled his run-in on the Hungarian border in ’90. He was coming back from Munich via Vienna without any money, food, or smokes. He had been visiting an old girlfriend, Rae Stern; he’d been in the same class as her, and she’d changed her last name and left for Germany after graduating from college. Now she was a singer who did regular shows at the Samovar restaurant. After spending a few reckless days and sleepless nights fueled by gin and whiskey, Ernst was finally starting to make his way back home, where Tamila was waiting for him. Things were just getting started between the two of them back then. Some Croatian nationalist picked Ernst up at night, took him down to Vienna, and dumped him out at the train station. That’s where he decided to risk it, taking a seat in the Belgrade-bound train, figuring he could ride for three hours or so, get off in Budapest, and avoid any document checks. Miraculously enough, he managed to cross the Hungarian border—the stars aligned for him it was as if he had vanished into thin air amid the drafts billowing down the train corridors. He put one over on the border guards, and they wound up stamping his passport and even forgetting to check his tickets. The ticket collectors couldn’t track him down in the vestibule or any of the bathrooms, so he stepped off the train victoriously at the Keleti railway station, celebrating his incredible luck and ultimately relaxing his vigilance, which proved fatal. He even managed to strike a deal with the train attendants on the Moscow-bound train, and they agreed to take him to the border and drop him off there. He didn’t have the money or audacity to get any farther. So, Ernst solemnly promised them

  9

  He’d get off at the border. “It’ll be all right,” he thought. “It’s not like they’ll chuck me out of the train in the middle of a field. Just make sure to cross the border, and then it’ll be smooth sailing.” That’s where he went wrong. He was sitting in an empty train car, bound for Moscow, looking out the window where the warm, March afternoon was giving way to a brisk evening. The red sun was sprawling out on the horizon, its bloody hue reflected in the windows. The closer he got to the border, the more a disquieting feeling started overwhelming him, because he knew that he wouldn’t be able to pull the wool over everyone’s eyes indefinitely; he’d have to take responsibility for his behavior.

  They didn’t actually wind up dropping him off at the border. Instead, the train attendant’s heavy glare bore down on him and he knew what was in store. At night, the train was rolling along a railway bridge and the heavy lampposts were piercing the black, stuffy compartments, like unidentifiable animals trying to peer through the cars’ window shades. He was sitting in the dark, tuning in to the churning of the wheels and the churning of his own heart and already knowing that he couldn’t escape what was coming, and that he should always be prepared for the worst.

  The worst part was that the feeling of helplessness was surfacing and growing. He saw then a well-defined image of what he had been trying to forget forever, what he had to avoid every time he started rummaging around in his memory—what he was afraid of even thinking about. Singapore, 1993.

  Their rusty, Greek-made vessel, which they had bought for pennies off the Germans, had been in the port for a whole week, its cheerful Liberian flags flying. They were a motley crew—a Greek captain and some sailors from the Philippines, with the balance of the crew made up of his countrymen. Nikolaich, the second officer, ridiculed by the sailors and hated by the captain himself, was an odd bird with multiple bald spots who didn’t seem to have a friend in the world; even the ship’s rats avoided him. How he tried to be one of the guys! How he bent over backward so the crew would just accept him! And that’s the thing about bending over backward—it makes you look rather foolish. In his compatriots’ eyes he was still a cheapskate and a lousy motherfucker. In the narrow, slanted eyes of the Filipino crewmembers, he only was a dick and cheapskate. What made them experts on lousy motherfuckers all of a sudden? Nikolaich heard them all snickering behind his back, he saw their mocking and scornful eyes, he imagined what they were saying about him, and his eyes filled up with tears and hatred. But the worst thing happened in Singapore. And he remembered every detail.

  Three guys beat him up; Ernst remembered that quite clearly. It didn’t last long, and they weren’t particularly adept fighters, so he only came away with a fat, slightly bloody lip. Then he picked up his empty backpack and set off for the train station, to keep pushing east, where they were still anticipating his arrival.

  After a week of waiting, watching the sun scotching the waves they still weren’t ready to leave port, the crew finally convinced Nikolaich to go ashore with them. “C’mon, boss,” they said, “come along with us. We’ll have some fun. We’ll find you the best girl in town. An officer on the best ship should have the best girl.” And he, piece of shit that he was, fell for it.

  There was that one time back in the ’80s when he was doing some fieldwork in Crimea. It came rushing back to him all at once, as if he had returned there: the nighttime air, the Crimean vegetation suffering through its long summer, and the incredible, bitter water in the bay knocked the wind right out of him. The wind was herding low-hanging columns of cloud along the sky, making them sail past the fishermen’s boats, the empty, nighttime beaches, above the scorched steppes and black, scarred roads. It all started the way these things typically do—bravery, joy; Soviet Crimea, before the tourist industry and displaced Tatars; bad wine, collective farms, ceramics, and bones in the dry ground.

  The archaeological expedition was a big group, and most of them had never met before. Ernst was the youngest one in the party, and everyone treated him accordingly. Being pushed around didn’t even bother him much anymore—after all, there was no hope of changing anything, really, so why bother complaining? And there was one really young teacher’s assistant in the group. Her name was Asya, yeah, Asya, that was it, and she was responsible for their team. They were constantly ripping trail markers off the trees and systemically violating all of Christ’s commandments. And Asya was always taking abuse from everyone—her superiors, her col
leagues, and the locals too, which is worth noting, though that isn’t what this story is about.

  It all got off to a rather inauspicious start. Ernst was always helping Asya out at camp, trying to be around her as much as possible. He’d walk her out to the bus stop when she went into town and meet her there when she came back. He’d sit next to her by the campfire in the evenings, be ready with a towel whenever she was swimming in the ocean, do all kinds of stuff for her, like a brother would—without a hint of unprofessional behavior, without counting on any reciprocation, and all the while being bullied by his older colleagues. He was pretty much doing what any sexually frustrated seventeen-year-old boy would have done. And Asya was always apprehensive in his presence. Sometimes it’d seem as though something was just about to happen between the two of them, like she was dropping hints, but it came to nothing, she’d change the subject every time, steering the conversation back to work, dashing all of Ernst’s hopes. It was hard on him, but he bounced back pretty quickly—he had to, since the local guys were already moving in on her, and they, unlike Ernst, were adept and energetic, giving her rides to the city in their Kopeika car and walking her back to the camp at night . . . The older guys in the expedition quite amused by the whole situation and would mock Ernst mercilessly. The worst part was that it was love she was rejecting. She wouldn’t have anything to do with him, romantically speaking, but she would let him do odd jobs for her, and would encourage him to wait for her at the bus stop. And that’s just where a bunch of local guys trapped him one day as he waited.

  They made it quite clear that they didn’t want Ernst hitting on their woman anymore (yeah, they called Asya their woman). They told him to stop causing trouble, that he should just head back to camp and jerk off like usual. That got Ernst all riled up. First he just yelled at them, and when that didn’t do any good, he started waving his fists around. The locals were surprised at this show of force, but that didn’t stop them from knocking Ernst down and giving him a good beating. He went back to the camp, picked up his spade and without saying a word, despite the jeering of his colleagues, he headed back to the bus stop. The crew, now realizing that the locals might wind up doing something permanent to the youngster, followed him, genuinely concerned. Ernst already knew that he had to fight until the end, that he couldn’t back down now, otherwise he’d go on being the camp pushover who always got sent to the store for wine, and who never got anywhere with the ladies. He figured the worst would be over fairly quickly—after which things would finally go his way.